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Private Notes
The pilot aired 3/29/57 on the 6th season of CBS’ “Schlitz Playhouse of the Stars” (coincidentally guest starring Michael Landon whom Dortort would later bring to “Bonanza”).
Vint Bonner meets an elderly woman who asks him to do something about her grandson. The young man has already killed two men and vowed to add Vint Bonner to the list.
After promising a seriously wounded outlaw that he will get him to town alive to stand trial, Bonner meets five men, including a doctor, who want to bring the man in. But then Bonner learns that the five have just taken part in a lynching, and he becomes concerned that they will do the same with this prisoner.
When the man's hotheaded younger brother is killed in self defense, Vint fears that his sheriff friend is too bent on revenge to bring the man who killed him back alive.
On the trail, Bonner meets a young boy who is looking to join his father. Bonner brings the boy to town, where the bank is robbed, and the sheriff kills one of the robbers---the boy's father.
Bonner finds a wounded man on the road, and brings him to the house of a an embittered woman who lives alone. He promises her he won't tell about the man at her place, but he later learns that the man is a wanted outlaw.
Everybody in the town of Copper Springs is eager to credit Bonner with the shooting of legendary gunman Jett King - including King himself, who doesn't want his reputation destroyed by letting it be known that the real shooter was a mild-mannered bank teller.
The hotheaded son of an old friend of Bonner's doesn't realize how much trouble he's in for after he kills the son of a powerful rancher in a gunfight.
The widow of a general insists her husband is still alive, though Bonner and everyone else knows that no one survived the massacre at the fort he commanded. Believing her to be delusional, a local rancher wants to have her sent to the state hospital so he can claim her land.
Stopping in the town of Harmony to visit his old friend Doc Cross, Bonner learns that the ruthless Cotten brothers and an infamous gunfighter plan to take control of the town and intimidate anyone planning to vote against them in the coming election. Reluctantly, thanks to the Doc, Bonner is put in the position of acting as Sheriff himself.
A young killer robs the telegraph office and guns down the clerks. Why is Sheriff Lawson reluctant to get up a posse or even to interview the surviving clerk? Vint Bonner comes into town and prods the sheriff into upholding the law.
Vint Bonner reluctantly befriends Wilbur English, a sniveling coward who betrayed his outlaw gang in return for a reward and pardon. Wilbur is fearful of deadly retaliation and looks to Bonner for protection.
Bonner intercedes in a delicate family situation when a wandering gambler returns to reconcile with the young son he abandoned eight years earlier. The boy believes his daddy is dead, and Bonner believes it's best to keep it that way.
Bonner begins to suspect that the likable guitar-strumming man he met on the trail may be the same man who shot and robbed a farmer. His clue is the song "Silver Threads Among The Gold".
On Christmas Eve Bonner and the Marshal capture "El Bruto," a super-strong but mute giant of a man accused of murder. The three men seek refuge for the night in a Spanish Mission where the resident orphans are reenacting the miracle of Christmas.
Bonner meets two brothers on the trail, one of whom he worked with in the past. The two claim to be with a posse that is searching for the robbers who held up a stage and killed an elderly deaf passenger. Actually, they are the ones who committed the act.
Offered a job by powerful rancher George Temple, Bonner turns the man down when he learns that he is trying to force Will Fetter to sell his small homestead. Temple and his hands regard Fetter as a coward who won't fight back, but Bonner, who knew Fetter before under another name, knows there is another reason why he refuses to fight back.
Art Hemper and George Willis, two former friends until George married Art's girl, accuse each other of the murder of Art's brother. Bonner tries to determine which of them actually did it.
A Quaker family encounters prejudice, hostility, and harassment from the residents of the closest town, who mistake their pacifism for cowardice. They also encounter it from the rancher Bonner has come to do business with, though the man's wife feels differently.
Bonner must travel through renegade Apache territory to escort a ruthless killer to another town for his hanging. Before he leaves, however, he realizes that he will face yet another danger---the man's girlfriend, who is determined to free him.
Bonner rides into Quiet City, a town that was once wild but is now peaceful. The sheriff of more than thirty years, an old friend of Bonner's, feels as if he's no longer needed and misses the wild old days when he had more to do. When the first killing in two years occurs the sheriff brings the killer in, but then imagines a lynch mob forming in the streets though no such mob exists.
Bonner has been sent to check on conditions in Hornitas, a gold mining camp which supposedly has none of the violence common to such towns. He finds that it is not so different after all, and that the sheriff is crooked and demands protection money from his citizens. Complicating matters, Bonner's only ally in town is a devout pacifist who insists that he check his gun with her and not use it as long as he's in town.
Stopping in a small town, Bonner learns that someone there using his name gunned down a harmless drunk for money. To clear his reputation, he must try to find out who the killer really was and who was really behind it.
To Bonner's astonishment, everyone in the town he is in believes he is about to be married to Helen Rockwood, including the friend of his that he thought was in love with Helen.
Bonner is suspicious of the motives of the daughter of a dying old friend when she comes to visit him, especially since she is in the company of a known outlaw. On top of this, after talking to her, the father, who hasn't seen his daughter since she was a child, insists she is not her.
The drunken escaped convict Bonner met on the trail may just be the long-lost father that the young sheriff in the nearby town is looking for.
Bonner agrees to teach young Henry Wilson how to be faster with a gun so that he can defend himself against the man he says is gunning for him. But is Wilson telling the real truth about what he intends to do with his newly acquired skill?
Emma Birch has organized the women of the town into a determined suffragette group; the men rebel and attempt to put the women in their place. Bonner becomes the reluctant mediator between the two groups.
A woman is shunned by everyone in her home town, including her own father, because she married a man who later turned outlaw and killed the town's leading citizen. Bonner tries to prevent the shunning from escalating into violence.
The citizens of a town persuade (well, not exactly just persuade) Bonner into the job of collecting money for a new church organ. Sounds too simple and safe compared to what Bonner's done before? Anything but, as he soon learns.
Vint Bonner is wounded while trying to track down the Drake brothers. His elderly aunt nurses him back to health and tries to prevent him from going back after the Drakes when he has recovered.
Vint arrives in Prairie City, Kansas to visit friends and find that it has been taken over by a band of renegade Civil War veterans from Texas. They are lead by a man called Colonel Bromley.
The two partners in Tower Rock's bank have split and formed two rival banks across the street, both men blaming the feud on each others' wives and their rivalry over the annual strawberry jam contest. The two bankers have in turn caused the entire town to form rival sides, and officials want Bonner to mediate the feud.
Bonner and a gun salesman come across the body of a man on the trail. The main clue they find is a torn half of a Confederate flag. After bringing the dead man to town, Bonner notices the mayor's reaction upon seeing the flag. The mayor opens up to Bonner and tells him that he was part of a group that planned to resurrect the Confederacy---and that others in the group are looking for him and the gold he has hidden.
Near Clay City, Bonner stops two bullies who are trying to force an old prospector to reveal the location of the gold he believes he has found. The old man has a history of claiming to have found gold that turned out not to be, and Bonner knows that the gold once abundant around Clay City is believed to now be all gone. But the assayer thinks this time the claim might be for real.
On the very day that Sheriff Jeb Barnes retires after 40 years as sheriff and is awarded a gold star by his citizens, the town bank is robbed. As Bonner goes looking for the robbers, he wonders if it was just a coincidence.
Two friends of Bonner's, a rancher and his wife, have now become Shakespearean actors on tour. When they learn that P.T. Barnum is in town, they decide to change their plans of moving on so that the famed showman can see them perform. Bonner tries to help out.
Bonner is in the saloon in a lawless town when he sees a young drifter forced into killing one of three brothers in self defense after they had been goading him. The other brothers lead a posse to find the young man, and Bonner knows they have no plans to bring him in alive. But the closest thing to a lawman the town had is so discouraged after the killing of his own son that he has lost interest in even trying to keep the peace or law.
An old widow friend of Bonner's hires him to protect an itinerant peddler who has been harassed by thugs working for a rancher, but the man insists on going through the rancher's land alone.
Bonner leads a surveying team to lay out the boundary between Colorado and New Mexico, but he has to deal with the opposition of both a powerful rancher and a widowed homesteader and her young son.
To explain to a young boy why he tries not to kill in gunfights, Vint relates to him the story of his grandfather, and how he dealt with a young hoodlum bent on revenge.
After a minister and his wife are killed by Yaqui renegades, their young son vows to avenge their deaths by killing 200 of the tribe. Vint hopes to talk some sense into the boy before it's too late.
At the dying request of an old buffalo hunter friend, Vint brings the man's uneducated, unkempt, and poorly mannered daughter to town with him in the hopes of transforming her into a lady.
Vint and a sheriff locate two Mexicans they have been pursuing for horse stealing. One escapes, but Vint is shocked to witness the sheriff shoot down the other one while he has his hands up. Vint decides to continue the pursuit of the other thief, if only to make sure he is brought in alive. When he locates the man, along with his beautiful sister, he learns the sheriff has been lying to him about many things.
A cocky and cynical young man who just came into town looking for a saloon woman is the main suspect when a robbery takes place, but is released as there are no witnesses to identify him. The teenage daughter of Vint's rancher friend is smitten with the young man, much to her father's chagrin. Vint tries to see if he can change the hotheaded youth or else discourage the girl from him.
Bonner persuades Chief Tashuka to honour the treaty with the white man by handing over two braves who are suspected of robbery. Unfortunately for Bonner, the chief's daughter Running Fawn takes a shine to Bonner and follows him to town. By Indian law Bonner is to marry the girl and reluctantly agrees to prevent a war. However when Bonner sees how beautiful Running Fawn is he uses an Indian custom to lose her to a brave.
While riding in an area where road agents have recently held up a stage and killed three men, Vint is himself held up by a rather inept would-be road agent, who happens to be a young woman, and who manages to save his life.
Vint learns that a gambling house worker he knows is the daughter of a Quaker couple who believe she is dead. The girl is in an abusive relationship with the owner of the gambling house, who will not let her leave him.
Vint brings an orphaned Southern boy to live with his Northern uncle's family. But the boy still has resentments toward the North, and is angry that his uncle fought on a different side from his father, who was killed in the war.
After being forced to kill a young hood in self defense, Vint rides to the man's sister's ranch, only to find she has already put out a bounty on him for shooting her brother in the back. Since she does not know who he is, Vint works for her under a different name, until he can convince her the killing did not happen in the way she was told.
A priest asks Vint to accompany him, along with two nuns, to check on the status of a mission in the midst of hostile Indian territory. Vint agrees, even though he knows that whites are forbidden in the area and are not known to have ever returned alive.
Vint's friend Olaf Burland plans to take his newly earned money back to his farm in native Minnesota, but Vint fears that the gullible Olaf will be easy prey for some who want to separate him from the money and will use any trick to do it. A crooked trail hand and a saloon owner plan to do just that, with the help of a saloon hostess who actually has desires similar to Olaf's.
An artist begins painting a portrait of a saloon girl, much to the displeasure of the owner of the saloon, who regards her as his woman, and thinks that the portrait, which will be hung on his wall, will show more of her than he wants to share with others.
Vint takes the son of an ex-gunfighter friend out of a saloon where the young man was in danger of losing all the money he had just received from his first trail drive. The boy is ashamed of his father's past and refuses to go back with Vint, but lets Vint take the money back to his father. When Vint comes to the father's ranch he learns that the boy has been killed, that he has been accused of the murder, and that the father plans to avenge his son's death in a showdown with him.
Vint is infuriated when he learns that a young woman has taken his horse Scar for a joyride, but his anger quickly evaporates when he meets the girl, and soon falls in love with her.
A rancher, a former major in the Confederate Army, asks Vint to hire on as a ramrod, to be paired with another ramrod whom Vint dislikes. Vint soon learns that the other ramrod has plans to take the ranch for himself, taking advantage of an embarrassing secret he has learned about the Major.
Vint is deputized by a U.S. Marshal and sent to serve notice on a German baron for having a cannon on his land. But the Baron, who has only recently acquired the title, insists he is within his constitutional rights, and sticks Vint in a jail cell. But Vint turns the tables on him.
Vint is deliberately framed for a bank robbery and murder.
Vint accompanies three cavalry officers to the shack of a stubborn old Confederate, whom the officers suspect of holding a gold shipment stolen twenty years ago during the Civil War. Vint is surprised to find that the old man does have the gold, that his place is fortified with cannons and Gatling guns, and that the only way he'll give back the gold is if the Northern officers surrender---to him.
Vint visits a former girlfriend, though she is now married, and her husband is now paralyzed and unable to speak, a fact for which she blames herself. Nearby a posse is hunting a ruthless killer who is known to be in the area.
A young woman meets Vint on the trail and tries to hire him to guide her to Abilene, but she changes her mind after her husband and two other men meet them and threaten Vint. Later Vint learns from her that the two men with her husband are killers. Her husband is working with them, planning to rob the bank when a gold shipment comes in.
An old medicine peddler has symptoms which could be serious, but refuses to go to the town doctor to have it checked. The peddler also sells quack medicines to a man who's been told by the doctor to stop drinking for his health's sake. Trouble brews.
Local ranchers are in arms over a series of cattle rustlings, all involving just a few calves taken at a time, and they are blaming the thefts on homesteaders. Vint, assisting the sheriff in looking for the culprits and avoiding bloodshed, is staying at the home of the two elderly Sweet sisters, both animal lovers who are vegetarians and don't believe in raising cows to be killed.
Vint comes to the town of Bluefield to investigate the death of a friend. He learns that the man was murdered for trying to organize small land owners against the town boss who has been using his gunfighter son to intimidate them into making him a partner in their ranch, then forcing them out or killing them. But getting the town boss convicted will not be so easy.
An old friend of Vint's has been jailed after being caught with a band of rustlers, and is likely to be hanged if he doesn't tell where the other rustlers are. But he is unwilling to because he fears that his compatriots will harm his deaf-mute daughter if they think he's told on them.
Vint helps search for a killer, a young man he helped raise, hoping to get him to trial before a lynch mob gets him. He has to contend with the man's ex-girlfriend, who still believes him to be innocent.
Old Matt Harper spent many years in prison for a bank robbery he did not commit. The state is now offering him compensation, but he refuses to take it, believing the state owes him a bank robbery.
Vint Bonner arrives in the town of Toredo to be best man at his friend, Dave Regan's wedding. Vint soon discovers that Dave has been shot in the back and that the town, led by the new sheriff Ben Webster, are looking for his supposed killer, Vance Carter. It is left to Vint to find the truth and lay a trap for the real killer.
A tough-talking lady blacksmith asks Vint to accompany her grandson, who has been educated in a fancy Eastern school, as he comes home on the stage. But the boy has been educated a bit too properly, as he is not ready for and contemptuous of the kind of life his grandmother has been living and the poor Mexican children around her.
When Vint stands up for saloon owner Fern Foster against abuse from townsfolk, a judge gives him 60 days to turn her into a lady---and threatens him with jail if he's not successful. Fern's husband, an outlaw, may complicate matters.
Bonner is sent for by Don Tomas Verdes, a Mexican ranch owner, to help him convince his son to stop riding with an outlaw gang. Bonner joins the outlaws to try and bring the boy to his senses.
After Jenny May McElroy's husband was killed in a gunfight, no one in town would give her a job to support her children, except for the saloon owner, who hired her as a bookkeeper. Because of this some of the "proper" townspeople want to take her children and make them wards of the state. They also want to fire the schoolteacher, the only other person in town who supports Jenny May.
Stopping see an old friend, Vint learns that the man has been charged with killing the town sheriff. After a farcical trial in a saloon presided over by a drunken judge, the man is sentenced to hang the next day. With the help of his friend's young son, Vint sets out to prove him innocent in the little time allowed.
An English journalist asks Vint to accompany him as he researches the West for material for his book, but actually he has other plans.
Vint tries to help an old newspaper editor in his crusade against three corrupt officials---the town's mayor, sheriff, and judge, as well as the gunman they've been using as their enforcer.
In the series' final episode, Vint is visiting a doctor friend when an unconscious and badly beaten boy is dropped at the door. A witness leads them to suspect a religious fanatic, and when Vint and the doctor check into it, they find a marked grave with only a log inside.
